‘The Devil Inside’ Director Defends the Movie’s Ending

[THIS POST HAS MILD DEVIL INSIDE SPOILERS]

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The found-footage horror film The Devil Inside took full possession of the box-office its opening weekend, earning $34.5 million dollars for Paramount Pictures, which had picked up the film for a mere $1 million. Paramount, of course, also had tremendous success with the continuously popular Paranormal Activity franchise. The Devil Inside initially looked poised to compete with the monster that is “Paranormal.” The second weekend for the film, however, saw a 76% decline and a drop to sixth place at the box-office earning a drastically reduced $7.5 million.

The much-maligned ending of the movie may account for the steep reduction in box-office returns. Writer/director William Brent Bell and co-writer Matthew Peterman, however, say that the audience response has not scared them “into wanting to have wrapped up traditional Hollywood endings to a movie. Not by a long shot.”

“It’s exciting to spark a dialogue with people,” director William Brent Bell explained during our interview. “I don’t know how you can quantify the statistics, but there are a ridiculous amount of people who love that ending. We knew that doing the film in a non-Hollywood, non-traditional way people would have a really harsh response to it. But it felt authentic to us.”

“We were going for a level of realism,” the films co-writer Matthew Peterman continued. “Sometimes real life doesn’t follow a perfect structure. Things aren’t always wrapped up and resolved when or how you’d like them to be. All of us enjoyed leaving things open ended. We thought it was visceral, we thought it was unique.”

There are, of course, two elements of the film’s conclusion. One is the abrupt stopping point (which, if you’ve not seen it, we will not reveal here), and the other, is what Peterman refers to as, the “interactive” element that allows the audience to follow-up their experience with a visit to a website, The Rossi Files, for more information on the “case” the film is documenting.

“You might be able to remove one and keep the other and not have that jarring effect on people,” Peterman mused. “The website was a very late idea and it didn’t seem to be quite as big a deal when Paramount presented it to us,” Bell continued. “And we were surprised that people were shocked and upset about an abrupt ending, because people seemed to want more, but the website seemed to feel a little bit manipulative. That wasn’t the intention, we were just trying something a bit different.”

“The sequel is something that we, the producers and Paramount are going to visit with in the next couple of weeks as the film gets out internationally,” Bell says. Given the recent drop in the domestic box-office, the continuation of the franchise will be largely dependent on the international gross. But then, there is certainly a precedent for horror franchises earning the bulk of their profits via the international audience.

Though the writing team say they have learned from the film, they still stick by what they were trying to create in terms of a sense of “realism,” and that includes the controversial ending. Where they go from here remains to be seen, but where they have come from feels like a fairly easy trajectory to trace. There is now an established tradition of this brand of horror film; indeed, after their Paranormal Activity purchase, Paramount developed an entire division devoted to low-budget horror films.

'Found footage' from 'The Devil Inside' documentary

“If you think of the real classics, the original ‘Halloween’ and the original ‘Chainsaw Massacre’, those movies are very raw and real,” Bell says. “Even ‘The Exorcist,’ It’s surprising when you go back and watch them to see how real they are. That, coupled with audiences being used to reality television, has made them open to less scripted and more handheld, more raw, real type of fare. I also think that when you’re trying to get scared you want to believe that it can happen to you. So when you’re watching a movie that is found-footage and faux documentary, it allows the audience to become a little more invested and a little more scared by what’s happening.”

The approach, as mentioned, is no longer novel, but it can be quite effective. The creative team used the “docu-style” as their aesthetic springboard and a shocking uptick in reported exorcisms over the last decade as the foundation for a tale which follows a young woman’s journey to uncover what has become of her demon-possessed (or possibly mentally ill) mother. “The Vatican had started this school for exorcism because they said that in 2004 the instances of exorcism was the highest that they had ever documented it,” Bell says. The pair were inspired do discover what believers felt was behind the upsurge and interviewed “metaphysicians, Priests, exorcists and neurologists” as part of their research for the script.

“If you believe in the devil, you believe in God and of course people want to believe in God,” Peterman offers as one possible explanation for the increase.

“You can’t have one without the other,” Bell agrees. “I’ll tell you one thing that’s kind of interesting,” the director says of his research into the minds of those who believe in possession. “They think that in this day in age that Satan, what have you, whatever you want to call it, uses Entertainment against us. Entertainment and technology. They would say his reach is so much further because now he can use twitter and Facebook and the Internet and television to communicate.”

As someone who makes their living online, it’s tough to argue with that.

“And people can see things that are more shocking or disturbing than they ever have in the past and maybe that has a negative effect on everybody overall,” Bell says.

“The big thing is science versus faith,” Peterman continues. “And as we go along further in time and we all become more knowledgeable and learn things about the past that may discredit the existence of God and the supernatural people will tell you that the Devil loves that. As much as the Devil likes to stay a little bit hidden, he would love for people to think that God is a myth.”

As to what their film offers in terms of insight into the phenomena, Bell sums it up thusly:

“I think it’s showing as realistic a portrayal of the battle between good and evil, or God and the Devil – if you want to call it that – as possible. And that the battle is out there, so don’t think that it’s not. So we’ve always said that it’s not anti-Church. It’s just showing that we might not be privy to the secrets of what might be happening out there in the real world.”

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TMolloy3 years ago

This just sounds like an excuse! The ending of this movie blew! Such potential wasted!

I won’t defend this movie by saying it was good (even though I enjoyed it), but I will say that the ending felt similar to the PA movies and the Blair Witch. And more things actually happened in this movie too. It’s still a 2 star movie; and the ending IS abrupt, but the rest of the movie makes up for it I think because the exorcism scenes are pretty good

I don’t even know where to start. This movie offers nothing new whatsoever. It doesn’t do anything new as far as exorcism films go, horror films, or found footage. If there was one similarity it should have done differently it should have had an actual ending. And you expect your audience to take the time to go to a website after watching a suck fest like this film? I haven’t heard any one say. anything good about the ending. Who did they test the ending with? Their parents? These morons are oblivious and insulting.

I understand their intention. I agree with them on the films of the past for the most part (although those films did not have abrupt endings and mentions of other media) and I agree what they say about areas of religion. And nobody (well, almost nobody) goes out to make a bad film. Their film was picked up by a major, made some quick dollars….most likely due to controversy and/or the success of the found footage horror sub-genre.

That all out of the way – the film still stinks, the ending is still a jip and the viral tag with the best of intentions still backfired.

“We were going for realism” aka “We ran out of money”. The ending was so cheap and pathetic. Of course they are going to try to defend it. It’s still in theaters and they are trying to squeeze out a few more bucks.

Weather or not their intentions were successful, there’s something to be said for trying to do something different. I find it hard to believe that no one likes the idea of killing off the protagonist in a very abrupt way, no one expects that. However, such a bold move needs to be handled expertly in order for the audience to accept it, which as it seems they didn’t accomplish.

did not like it.. it was not real and was not entertaining.. it needed to be real.. it was not accurate of what it was.. it was shot documentary style… it was not like entertaining movies today.. it had to be real. wasn’t.

Don’t you know people could be very sensitive at their stomachs In a big screen with a camera moving constanly, people should be warned about this type of movies. It is one of the worst movies I’ve seen. I want my money back.

The sour truth for the film-makers is,that this is the laziest ending I have ever seen to a film,it’s not unique,or visceral,it was a cash cow and they were trying to ride on the coat tails of a great franchise,’paranormal activity’.i am a film study graduate,i truly love great cinema and credit given where credit is due,but after the recent disappointing possession genre enstallments such as ‘The rite’ and the also but not equally shameful ‘the last exorcism’,this was a great opportunity to do something special but they disgustingly f**ked this movie up well before the end,there were plot holes and the story was all over the place!!such a same,don’t make any more films please William Brent Bell and co-writer Matthew Peterman or if you do,ring ME,pay me £1,000,000 and I’ll atleast squeeze something out better than the turd I just watched. Kind regards

The sour truth for the film-makers is,that this is the laziest ending I have ever seen to a film,it’s not unique,or visceral,it was a cash cow and they were trying to ride on the coat tails of a great franchise,’paranormal activity’.i am a film study graduate,i truly love great cinema and credit given where credit is due,but after the recent disappointing possession genre enstallments such as ‘The rite’ and the also but not equally shameful ‘the last exorcism’,this was a great opportunity to do something special but they disgustingly messed this movie up well before the end,there were plot holes and the story was all over the place!!such a same,don’t make any more films please William Brent Bell and co-writer Matthew Peterman or if you do,ring ME,pay me £1,000,000 and I’ll atleast squeeze something out better than the turd I just watched. Kind regards

All of these “found footage” try to achieve realism by pretending they’re documentaries instead of films. Yet a documentary has an editing process, it presents a conclusion, it leads somewhere. Being close to reaching the point where the story becomes interesting and then stopping because “life is not always perfectly structured” only means that you didn’t know how to end this story while keeping it a horror film. And you can’t defend your story if you’re not even able to tell it.

You want to do something different? Do something different. But don’t scam your audience by making them pay the tickets to watch a film you were too lazy to make. Telling half a story is not telling a different kind of story.